Month: April 2017

At 12:05pm on 4/23/2017, Create Your First eCommerce Business Quickly and Easily, presented by Sam ENgland, at the 2017 Wordcamp Conference in Raleigh, NC

Create Your First eCommerce Business Quickly and Easily

WooCommerce is a great system to use online. The goal is to use some great things today.
So, what makes him different? He’s worked with hundreds of companies, and currently running over 30+ successful ecommerce stores. He loves helping people.

Doing things right

He’s only done that by doing a lot of things wrong. Its a learning process.He figured how to organically rank SEO and its easy than you think. I figured how to get his products ranked on the first page of google within minutes. How to build simple product brands that can be sold for big bucks when he’s ready to sell them. You should look to build it up as quick as possible and then sell it off in 2 years.

I guarantee that you will learn some new things about ecommerce than you have never seen before. The fastest reliable manufacturers that want to work with you now, and how to buy the domain name you want even if it exists.

He is using a lot of the sales material approaches like free, simple, easy, show you something I show only to close friends, etc. This is very worrisome if you might think its a hustle. I don’t but I’m wary.

dropshipping

Dropshipping is selling a product for a product supplier. Its also called blind shipping or arbitrage. You have no products, no warehousing, etc. You get everything from the product supplier, images, prices, description.

ECommerce allows you to work anywhere with a laptop and internet connection. Choose your own hours. 2 hours a night is 40 hours a month. And you have no boss.

Keys of a successful market

YOu need to make sure your target market has repeat customers. The best customer is the one who already knows you and trust you. Is it a seasonal niche product like Christmas ornaments, Halloween costumes, etc.? If you’re seasonal it might not work all year. COmpetition is good – it shows there is a market.

Avoid product that everyone in the work is trying sell– dont’t try to sell those. and not commidities. COncentrate on more expensive and light weight products- don’t limit your profits! Don’t give up. Free shipping models are good business today. you’ll need to get the ship weight low. Take advantage of the resources that you have on the internet. DOn’t overthink things, keep it simple.

research for product ideas

Look for sold counts and review counts online. See how much they were silling for (to get an idea of pricing). Look into the feedback and criticisim in the reivews to improve the product yourself. If the knife is OK, bundle a PDF or Knife sharpener. Perhaps a knife-sharpening video to go along with the product. See what styles are selling the best. Know what design/style to sell. Know the major players are to get an idea of market size and competition. Use Google Trensds and look at what the searches looked like over the past few years for your products.

There is software for ebay, amazone, alipress, etc. that you put in a keyword and it will return the results. Hot niches are not bad. Collegiate & NFL, cycling, golfing, scuba diving baby infant, etc.

Use “Buy Buttons” at all times. Stay away from things which are returned if you can. the 16,000 product market site was sold, and now his largest product is 300 on a site.

Find reliable manufacturers

Investigate and research your competition. Research trasde shows and merchandise market directories to easily find reliable manufacturers. If you don’t get return contact in 2 days, for get them. Pay attention to details when investigating a potential manufacturer. Don’t use middlemen! Never pay a monthly fee. Find manufacterers who do not sell to the general public.

Remember the finding merchandise is not h e biggest problem you have. Look around the world. BIllions of products are available. A solid manufacter will make every part o fyour ecomerce busienss easier and more profitable. Its a lot easier that you think.

Customer Service

$20 evoice.com 800 number and a customer contact form. Its well worth it. Put your 1800 number in an image, never an image. Be upfront and honest. Contact your customer immediately if an item is on backorder, or if there is any issue with an order. This is an opportunity to shine, and win repeat business and have customers who will. The their friends = free advertising.

Give the customers a way to provide feedback. Use package inserts to get positive feedback from your loyal customers. We give business cards to the drop shipper with an option, and a sheet to check your order. Always supply tracking numbers to your customers. You will needs to have good understanding of the product. He did not use phone orders because they took too much time, and no guest access because they need to confirm that the right person gets the order.

CHoosing Good Domain Names

Everytime you look for a search and see shopping in the top, there is good competition. Store, online, Center, depot, world, central. Your, DIY, my, best.

No seo, but product names, images, videos if possible. Keep it simple.

how to rank your videos like a ninja

70% get ranked easily. Right click on video. Choose properties. Choose details. Fill in the title, subtitle, rating, tags (keywords) and comments. Do this to put keywords in the video. Hit apply. Add tags!

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I will teaching the ins and outs about eCommerce from my 14+ years of running a successful eCommerce business and also how to get started quickly and easily with FREE tools.

At 11:00am on 4/23/2017, Move from HTTP to HTTPS… or Become Irrelevant, presented by Peter La Fond, at the 2017 Wordcamp Conference in Raleigh, NC

Move from HTTP to HTTPS… or Become Irrelevant

Internet isn’t as secure as we wish. CloudBleed, Wikilieaks’ Vault7, Wordfence disclosed home router hack (57,000 homes confirmed). Cisco March 13th advisory noted that there is no workaround, and that anyone could possibly hack any cisco device and that you’ll have to wait until a patch comew out.

Last year, google came out with a 2-prong plan to move everyone to https. Reward SEO mojo to pages having HTTPS, and place a “Site not secure” alert in chrome browsers.

Difference between the two

Http is the protocol of the web. Https is SECURE. Migration requires a SSL/TLS certificate installed on a webserver followed by a series of steps to configure the website.

Http lacks security. It creates a MiTM (man in the middle) setup in which someone monitoring the
traffic can grab the information as it passes through. There are many people who’d love to get your information

Currently over 50% of google SERP is shoiwng HTTPS. Currently a small message appears. Phase 2 will be an information tab AND a message. Soon you’ll receive a phase 3 RED Triangle and message. Many other browsers will be following suit, and firefox already has.

What does it cost?

This might only takes hours to set up, and then a few weeks to get things set up. Using Let’s Encrypt is a much faster way to build, but the host must work with Let’s Encrypt.

Its only secure if you see the padlock. a little plugin called really simple SSL, and Why no padlock? to track down issues. Hardcoded CSS will not be found.

SSL is another item to manage, it is a certificate which will expire and need to be updated every year. Moving to a new host? Your certificate will also need to migrate

NOt all certs are created equal

Chrome may flag Symantec certs as Untrustworthy. They are considered to be built very sloppily. Let’s encrypt is a great service. Its free, and the host should have a script running which updates the SSL every 90 days.

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Don’t be caught flat-footed! It’s time to get migrate to HTTPS. Google Search is actively pushing non-HTTPS websites to the second and third results pages. Additionally, the Google Chrome browser has started to show “Not Secure” notices when a webpage isn’t HTTPS compliant. An overwhelming percentage of WordPress websites are not HTTPS compliant.

This talk will touch upon the hazards of not migrating to HTTPS and the various steps required to get HTTPS up on your WordPress website.

At 9:30am on 4/23/2017, I attended Managing Your Iceberg, presented by Cory Miller, at the 2017 Wordcamp Conference in Raleigh, NC

Managing Your Iceberg

Cory opened by telling us that we’d be hearing some very personal things. Entrepeneurship is the hardest and most rewarding job there is. When looking at the important info, he came to this idea of the iceberg.

The tip we see is seunchine and success – everything is awesome. Below the waterline, struggle and suffering – all the stuff I bury & hide from everyone. Anger, stress, frustration, jealousy, competition,. conflict, loss, insecurity, criticism, failur, fear, etc. You’re not alone.

For the man’s life in 2010-2011, so much was going on in his business life, that everything was coming up roses. However, there were numerous items under the surface which was tearing his life apart.

Today, things are slightly different. He has a 4-year old child just like him, and a 2-year old child just like his wife. And, certainly being a parent is the most frustrating job which has ever existed. They are the greatest joy in life, but they are also the greatest trouble. 🙂 Its worth it though

Same Problems, Different Names

We have to learn to be human. You’re a real person, you have emotions. Let’s not hide the human experience, lets not sweep it under the rug (let’s NOT do this on facebook). Be Human with others, and you’ll get human back. SOmetimes its not always awesome, but it is real. There are too many opportunities to be robotic or inhuman. If you aren’t being human or acting it, you’re missing out.

What holds us back

Self defense, fear, ego, pride, shame, embarrassment, guilt… these things hold us back. In short, a superhero syndrome. That he may not want anyone to help him, that he could take it all on. The right people rushed in to help him when he let it out.

How to navigate the iceberg NOW

Its all about relationships and people. Those who rush in, while everyone else runs out. Those are the helpful ones. For us viewers, if everything in your world got turned upside down, WHO would you need? Things will go wrong. When everything hits the fan, who is there to help you make it through.

Your significant other- your first and essential partner. Your counselor- someone who you may not have to ask to pass you your favorite dish at thanksgiving.

My iceberg group

Safe group of like-minded, value-aligned people on a similar path. What’s the why? The learning, growth, accountability, support you need to keep you afloat. Its ok to have a uniform group #2, and iceberg friends that help to keep you afloat. I hate the term “mastermind group”. To get them, find those who are trusting and respect, confidentiality, no pillow talk. Learn and grow, not there to sit and gloat, and able to receive Empathetic support and not be jealous or judgemental. Empathy is not sympathy. its walking in one another’s footsteps without judgement.

Wysiwyg, shed the masks and costumets. Share the iceberg, the higest highs and lowest lows. Parallel stories offered, but not arrogant advice. More often than not, we want your story, not to be told things as advice. Give me the story and I’ll draw my own conclusions.

It starts with you

Be proactive and start herding cats. Start today. be open and honest, but have mutual trust and respect with CIA-level secrecy. There are plenty of support groups for problems which are specific, but not exactly one for LIFE.

Start simple and build from there. Dedicated meetings regularly. Monthly by phone, zoom, whatevery works. Once a year, have a retreat, and add new members.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. THis has been tweaked to:

if you want to go miservable and lonely, go alone. If you want to go supported and happy, go together.

Cory Miller is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur. In 2008, he started iThemes, one of the first commercial product companies in WordPress, that now offers key products like BackupBuddy, iThemes Security and iThemes Sync. Named the 7th fastest growing company in Oklahoma City in 2011 by the Metro 50, iThemes employs over 20 people around the globe with headquarters in Oklahoma City. In 2011, he co-founded The Div, Inc, a nonprofit tech foundation aimed at inspiring and training the next generation of web developers through its kid’s program, Div Jr. He is the co-author of WordPress All-in-One for Dummies (Wiley, 2011) and is a member of the Oklahoma chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a network of over 8,000 entrepreneurs in 40 countries with companies that have revenue over $1 million dollars annually. He blogs regularly about entrepreneurship and career advice here at CoryMiller.com. He is married to Lindsey Miller, who is the Partner Manager at Liquid Web. They have an adorable son named Caloway and a little sweetheart daughter named Lillian.

At 4:30pm on 4/22/2017, I attended Frameworks Springboard: Build Better Sites in WAYYY Less Time, presented by Shelly Peacock, at the 2017 Wordcamp Conference in Raleigh, NC

Frameworks Springboard: Build Better Sites in WAYYY Less Time

Here’s whatI expect: After this talk, I won’t have to pick a random theme again. I’ll learn quick customization tips, and won’t fear the functions.php file any more. Also, I’ll incorporate Page Builders for even more speed and flexibility.

Takeaways: Tons of resources, basic functionality of child themes and page builders, all built on a framework.

Most designers will find the free themes that they like and they move forward, choosing more specialized theme. Canvas was a drag and drop first toe into frameworks- using them to build different things.

what’s a framework

a frameworks builds the basics of the house, but its your job to change out the design. Frameworks are used for speed, easily changing theme and designs. We’ll talk about 3 that start with a base framework and 3 child themes. You should use them because they are well-coded and have continuity. it is always the same and the theme is always the same and laid out in the same order. We’ll use Genesis.

Why use a framework? It has a giant community to help and support and a ton of resources available for frameworks. they are 10,000 time more available, in-depth, and fantastic.

Which frameworks?

A framework must have: accessibility, responsivity, and ease of use. Accessibility is the first smackdown from google. A non-responsive site gets a 60% smackdown from google. and of course easy to use.

There are premium and free frameworks. Genesis framework is her go-to framework. In her case, it was a 2-day setup for a new site. its $60 for the framework and the “sample Themes”. Child theme are plug and play.

Divi is the number 2 choice. Its easy with options. It has a drag and drop plugin. its $89 for all plugins.

Builder is a another theme option. Its unique in that its almost a pagebuilder by itself. You can have 5 different pages with 5 different looks and lay them out page by page.Its $197 for all items and all themes.

There are also some free options. Beans. Speedy, easy to set up, but a few child theme. You can build your own child themes.

So… how?

wpcore.com is a free system. Sign up for an account and you can create a collection of plugins. These plugins save time!

Checklist

This checklist is a start to finish plugin ideas, ecommerce system plan.

Beaver Builder

Using a sample theme as our example.
1) Set header (style sheet line 1041)
2) Set nav (style sheet line 1110
3) set footer (style sheet line 1449)

Beaver builder fills in everything in between. You must have a full-width page template. (link in notes) save as beaver-builder-page.php and drop into the css folder

For visual designers, you’re well-situated to bring them in early as opposed to later. Set aside a 2-hour period of time, changing fonts, colors, etc.

Then she moved through several examples. I liked this sessions, but will be a little LESS likely to use these framework systems. The examples shown of the work she had done were not good. I would never do this kind of work for my customers. She was very excited to say she was able to build out a fully templated website for $1500 in only a few hours. Frankly, the website looked like it was created in a few hours. A system like ENFOLD or BRIDGE seems like it could have a much better return on investment, a much better look and feel, and much more approachable backend service.

I found some of this material to be very helpful, but the examples did not back up the level of expectation I had. Perhaps I was overshooting the desires of the presenter.

At 3:25pm on 4/22/2017, I attended From Amazon to WordPress: Creating your eCommerce Site, presented by Sharon Dawson, at the 2017 Wordcamp Conference in Raleigh, NC

From Amazon to WordPress: Creating your eCommerce Site

Promoting your physical products on Shopify, Etsy, or Amazon can be convenient, but expensive since those sites take a cut of your profits. By switching to WordPress to promote your products, you can drive more customers to your brand and keep more of your profits.

The basics of setting up eCommerce on your WordPress site

Page 2 of google is where they hide the dead bodies. People hate ecommerce website because they drop their shopping cart due to unreachable customer service. 22% of shopping cart abandonments are due to forcing customers to create an account. If people cannot sort or filter their results, they will leave to find one which can. A search should be able to used and products found. $2% of users do not trust poorly designed sites. If your website store is not mobile friendly, you’re losing 25% of your customers.

The customer is always CHEAP. think about your shipping costs, coupon codes, and stacking promotions. Think about the product you have. There are plenty of other vendors. Turn off the stackable promotion vs. sales. Slickdeals.com was burning them in the past with codes.

So how do you sell lip balm? burts bees shipped a $3.30 lip balm for $5. An $8 chapstick?

A picture is worth 1,000 words? A picture is worth nothing if its wrong. Picture matches description and title. Correct color, flavor, type. Size, special packaging. Lots of low reviews occur if you see a wrong picture with what you receive.

The eCommerce Golden Rule: Do unto others as Amazon has done unto others. If theexact same product is being sold on amazon for less, well, good luck. Can you offers discounts?

Things to consider when setting up a new eCommerce store

eCommerce basics:

Make sure its obvious its ecommerce,

Well designed product pages,

Logical easy to use checkout flow

310 redirects when a product no longer available

FAQ page relating to eCommerce, not just company or products

Standard pages in footer

Terms of Use

Privacy Policy

Shipping Policy

Returns Policy

Product Pages

Things to consider when setting up a new eCommerce store

APpealing images

appealing images

product description not duplicate

if multiple colors/flavors/size, drop down or separate options on the page that carries over to the payment engive

size or quanity in container clearly listed

reviews

Popular themes to use to quickly make an attractive online store: Woo Commerce Plugins

Woocommerce Subscriptions. Accepts weekly, monthly annual payments

Table Rate Shipping

Stripe payment gateway

WooCommerce Mailchimp

WooCommerce Currency Switcher

Products slider

PDF Invoices

Popups

They give about 20% more completions, but only if the offer is better than anything on the page. FOMO ( Fear of missing out- only a few left, only __ time less, get it before the end of the month). Split testing.

How to promote your site to existing customers from Shopify, Etsy, or Amazon

Cant beat em? Join em! Introduce your products via Amazon. Put a deal in the package, for YOUR website. Follow up email with a deal. Then ask for a review on Amazon. This will strengthen your response on Amazon, but offer them your website.

“If you had anything less than a 5-star experience, please contact us at –@— and we’ll make it right.”

Creating feeds for Google shopping

Google product feed through woocommerce. Feeds into google merchant center. This one will lead the google feed into your results.

At 1:00pm on 4/22/2017, I attended Maximize Your Productivity, presented by Cameron Campbell, at the 2017 Wordcamp Conference in Raleigh, NC

Maximize Your Productivity

Everyone wants to get more done with their day, but we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that putting more hours in at work results in more productivity. I’d like to dispell that myth and offer practical solutions for freelancers and teams to maximize their productivity while working less hours.

Productivity Misconceptions
Working more hours makes me more productive. There is a tipping point where you care less. We don’t actively think about productivity

Habits & Routines

There is not magic hat or map. Unfortunately it is really more about putting in some routines. The penny is worth millions if doubled every day for a month. Every small adjustment which keeps happening can bring you to a much better place over time. If an hour is saved each day, 5 hours a week, 40 hours each month…

Distractions

Why are distractions so bad? You lose your focus. YOu don’t just lose the time of the distraction, you lose the time of getting back in, to the focus. CHanging over to email often gave them the ability to be further distraction.

Multitasking is a lie. It doesn’t work. Those distracted in the middle of a task took 4 times as long to complete their task as those who worked through from start to finish.

Schedule All Things

Rather than being reactive, be proactive to distractions. Schedule everything in 20min blocks for your time schedule. Schedule in some “Focus Blocks”, times you cannot be reached. Set aside time for items. He showed some pomodoro times.

Task Lists & Project Management

As a freelancer, he used email. That was a trainwreck. Basecamp, trello, teamWork, Asana. Set up project templates that have all of your most-used tasks and to-do lists ready to go. Organizae your tasks and assign them out to people and add due dates. Assign things to yourself and give them due dates. Try to keep client discussions inside the app as opposed to chat or email. This will save your sanity.

Give them some training for how to use this. (Give a link, give a screenshot, and give clear instructions – browser, device, etc.) In addition to basecamp, he also keeps a to do list. its a 3×5 card with the top 3 items on it. the notecard is too small to fill out, and starting this habit is very helpful.

Better Routines

Routines provide rhythm to your day. Brain triggers are sensory cues to your bear that it needs to shift gears, ASAP. It used sight, smell and even taste. His morning brain triggers use coffee music and computer. This helps him get into focus. The morning is his most productive time. Every day, he sits down with coffee, instrumental music, and the code editor. Its something which took time to ramp up into.

Stopping for the Day

When its time to quit for the day, he has a brain trigger of closing the door and stepping away.

Getting Away From the Screen

Your body can only focus on high function for 90 minutes. Schedule in a time or two for recharging the battery.

At 1:00pm on 4/22/2017, I attended Getting Started with Video, presented by Jeff Jacobson, at the 2017 Wordcamp Conference in Raleigh, NC

Getting Started with Video

Why use online video?

Product demonstration

travel video

instructions

performance

vlogging

What makes a good video?

Tells a story effectively and efficiently

Good picture

Good Audio

Good Host

Effectively tell a story

Planning. Write a script. Storyboard your shots. Adobe Story is a fine program to assist building these out. Its clunky to write these 2-column scripts, but its very useful.
Editing

Good PIctures

Properly exposed

accurate colors

well framed

properly focused

Good Audio

microphone close to or on subjecyt

volument properly adjusted, microphone not “Clipping”

no extraneous sound

Basic Video Concepts

Field of view. How muc h of the shot can you see, and what does that tell us? Wide angles give the atmosphere, the short field is more personal.

Dept of field: How much is in focus? with shallow, the subject is in focus. A wide depth of field shows everything to setting mood.

Aperture: The amount of light let into the shot.

After a few minutes of this presentation, I honestly started having trouble focusing. The materials were extremely basic. I hoped to take a class about getting your offline business online, but that session cancelled. Important points like “Use a Tripod” didn’t really inspire confidence. Several people had fallen to sleep because of the heat and proximity to lunch.